Turkish hacker brings down Aussie emergency services

The Web pages of the New South Wales State Emergency Service were bought to their knees by a hacker who felt that was what his religion would have wanted. According to the Sydney Morning Herald the hacker seemed to think that the Prophet Muhammad would have approved of the fact that Australians, including fellow Muslims, would not have been able to get information on their emergency services.

In fact that hacker was certain that instead of getting much needed information, they would rather read the hacker's rants about the US, France, and Israel. “How can you even think talking about our Prophet Muhammad?? ... We will never let you humiliate and tease the Muslims,” the defaced site read.

Of course there were some limits to the hackers crusade. The web pages targeted were sub-pages for regions including Wollongong, Sydney Southern, Gosford, Hurstville, Guyra, Corindi, Armidale, Ryde, Randwick, Lismore, Tamworth, Kogarah, Manly, Orange, Shoalhaven and Inverell. If you have not heard of any of these places, it is not surprising. It is unlikely that the population of these areas would care a dingo's kidneys what was going on in the other side of the world. Insulting someone else's prophet is not really one of the list of crimes would be well below other more important things like avoiding sitting on those red backed spiders in the dunny.

However that did not stop “Turk Muslim Hacker” thinking that they would be the ideal place to have a crusade. If anything they would not have seen it coming. All of the targeted web pages were defaced with the same message and while they have been pulled offline.

It appears that the emergency services were not under threat. The websites were hosted on a different server to the one that hosts the main SES site.

The government is currently moving its SES units across to the state-wide server, which is more secure. Meanwhile the creator of the YouTube video, alternately titled “Innocence of Muslims” or “The Real Life of Muhammad”, was arrested last week for violating terms of his probation.